Digital literacy in early chilhood education

Digital literacy in early chilhood education

How does the kindergarten work as an arena for children`s Digital Literacy
when they participate in production of multimodal texts based on Art Encounters?

Theoretical Framework

Formation «Bildung» contains in its classic form two elements: the «The individual strength and expression, and the cultures force and influence» According to Løvlie (2003), is there a third element, the transformation, the poetic «refinement» of the relationship between personality and culture. With this view, the formation concept is inspired first and foremost in the expressive and poetic creative human.

Paradigm and Methods

This project are within the qualitative, interpretive research methodology. These are studies with few informants selected from children and teaching staff in the kindergarten departments.
This is a formative research project in which 12 children in a kindergarten has created multimodal texts on the basis of Art encountering. In the children’s work with the multimodal texts, digital tools have been used. The thesis will highlight the process from the art encountering, via digital tools into a complete multimodal text.
The processing of the data is given a narrative form to present the participants experiences and reflections through narrative analysis.

The Study can be outlined as follows

Selection: 1 kindergarten, Unit:1 department, 13 children and the staff who work in their unit, Natural setting: Their work with multimodal texts in three different projects carried out in the kindergarten over a period of a year and a half, Formative research: Pedagogical experiments – development research – action-based research, Culture-oriented Ethnographic inspired, but not a distant role as a researcher (all orchestrated by the researcher). Narrative analysis: I will use a narrative form to present the participants’ experiences and reflections (which corresponds to Polkningshorn`s Narrative Analysis)

Aim of the three sub-projects

Through three sub-projects, the children are given the opportunity to:
develop their digital literacy

develop sensitivity to listen, observe and express themselves through versatile encounters with and reflection on culture, art and aesthetics

strengthen their cultural identity and their personal expressions by using imagination, creative thinking and the joy of creating

develop the ability to process and communicate their impressions and give varied expression through creative activities

Main findings

In this study encountering the art initiate the children’s meaning making in the face of their own expression, while the digital tools are one of the framework factors related to children’s situated expressions. By letting the children gain experience with digital tools by creating multimodal texts they will develop their digital literacy. The children get to participate in transformative learning processes and experience different forms of aesthetic practice, by working practically and actively with art. It is a activity that takes place at various arenas. The digital tools allow the children repeatedly encounters with art, in addition to this the tool helps the children in their aesthetic considerations related to the multimodal texts’ relationship between form and content. This gives them several opportunities to create meaning, both relating to their creation of texts and regarding to the world around them. In this context, the PhD Thesis would like to discuss and highlight the role of the digital tools, the art encountering, creating of multimodal text and situated expression.